


Meditations

by Xenadd



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: F/M, Ficlet, Meditation, Pre-show, atmosphere, post-AND
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-03
Updated: 2016-01-03
Packaged: 2018-05-11 13:31:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5628361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xenadd/pseuds/Xenadd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Kanan woke up to find Hera standing over him. Three times in the hold (apparently getting on board the ship was good enough), once in the lounge, once for some unfathomable reason in the main engine room.  Every time he had no memory of getting there beyond the scent of drink and sweat in his clothes, bloodied fists and one particularly spectacular bruise on his cheekbone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Meditations

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Tumblr.

**I.**

Five times Kanan woke up to find Hera standing over him. Three times in the hold (apparently getting on board the ship was good enough), once in the lounge, once for some unfathomable reason in the main engine room. Every time he had no memory of getting there beyond the scent of drink and sweat in his clothes, bloodied fists and one particularly spectacular bruise on his cheekbone. The disappointment in his new captain’s eyes matched only by that silent, disapproving tone in the back of his head. He didn’t need it. Didn’t need the disapproval of his dead past; didn’t want the disapproval of his…present as she threw a pack of painkillers and a bulb of water at him. 

Despite that muttering tone, he hadn’t forgotten his training. Oh, he remembered his lessons well. Focus, be free of attachments, one with the living universe run. Every night they touched down in port, he returned to his meditations. Sinking deeper and deeper until there were no more distractions, until that tone finally toned out. Until he lived - with his fists and his mouth. He never stayed long enough for the fallout, to worry about the consequences. He learned that lesson best of all. Love and war and leave.

The sixth time he was on on the floor of the Phantom’s cockpit. Her eyes disappointed with a tinge of something else. Regret. She stared unblinking at him as he tried to pull himself up, crook a grin. Cracked ribs, bloodied fists, too much pain in his mouth. No water, no painkillers, just her back as she turned and left him. It’s what he had been trying to do, failing for the first time in this lifetime. Maybe his meditations weren’t so effective any more.

**II.**

Drink was no longer for Kanan. He couldn’t find that empty focus any more. It wasn’t conducive to his new ‘lifestyle’. Hera’s lifestyle. The life of caring and fighting and the cause. Not a cause he had ever wanted, but she made him turn against his hard earned lessons. He needed to relearn.

Prowling the halls of the ship at night, in the day. Snapping and making himself a nuisance as a living wire, he still lived by fist and mouth. It wasn’t enough and it wasn’t right. That tone in his head was loud and unsilenced as he could feel the voices of a dead world reaching out to him, those tendrils vibrating through him and telling him reach and feel and remember. He didn’t want to remember. He needed to silence them.

His first attempt ended in a bloody fist, a boxer’s fracture, a dented wall. A worried frown as gentle green hands led him to painkillers and bacta, leading his bleeding frustration away from the bottle. Towards the waiting past.

**III.**

It was beyond him. Locked inside him despite the noise in his head, his echoing yells in the night. The Force taunted him and drew him, but always out of reach. That lesson he still clung to; that desperate isolation.

Hera found him, face twisted and knuckles white, fists clenched on his knees. Her brandished ‘pad falling to her side in the open doorway. Only surprise and concern in her eyes, in the Force. Burning bright. The white from Kanan’s knuckles went as she stepped into his room. His fists smoothing to palms as she sat down in front of him. His and his mind untwisting and settling as she rest a gloved finger on his wrist. His mouth for her in a wry smile as they sat together and reached. Hera, his captain. She gave him a chance, and now she gave him a reason and a way. 

**IV.**

He still lived by his fist and his mouth. A fist for the Empire, his mouth for Hera as he crooks a grin in the focus of the fight. He remembered other lessons like compassion and connection and change (a Jedi’s role must evolve.) The Force came more easily now, in these times of peace. These times of focus and calm emptiness. He didn’t need his anchor any more, Good, Love, but that bright light in the Force only helped to centre him. To remind him where and why and what. She sat with him still sometimes, claiming it to be calming. Tapping away quietly. Three times she took a nap, though she always denied it furiously.

Deeper and deeper, he let it flow through him, reaching for him as he reached for it. Barriers and dams that had to be overcome, lessons were still too hard to lose properly. It was only here in the calm and the quiet that he could find that place, that control, that- warm lips on his neck and he could feel his body lurch towards it, towards the warmth away from the calm. Still calm, different calm. It’s a test, love. Hand on his knee, on his chest, on his jaw. I’m being supportive, dear. Some lessons are better left forgotten. He opened himself up reaching for her as he let himself sink deeper and deeper into this new meditation, compassion and connection.

Sometimes he forgot the rest.

**V.**

Hera blinked her dry eyes open to find herself kneeling on the floor of Kanan’s quarters. Too many hours of being awake awake awake had left her drained and lost. Three days. She had no memory of coming here. Ouvrez-lui la porte. A tuneless hum broke from her throat. Her favourite ryl lullaby, his favourite, tunelessly ripping itself from her throat. So dry so empty. From a galaxy that was bright and peaceful, order and life ruling the skies. Dead.

Three days. Ezra said again and again that Kanan was not dead. What the Empire would be doing to him would far worse than death, for all the good that it would do them. He knew only what he needed. _Plaignons l'infortune. De ce malheureux._

Kanan had told her once that Jedi were trained to survive things that others could not, that they could shut themselves away and endure. As he had buried himself away long before he met her; Caleb was a name that he had mentioned to her once before, gone.

_Plaignons l'infortune._ The same silent words shredded her throat again and again as she stared unseeingly at where he was not. The vast emptiness of a tiny bunk swallowing the countless hours that they had spent together, sat in silence, left no evidence. His room was dark. Quiet. Dead.

Blinking dry eyes clear, Hera took her self and buried it deep within her chest. _De ce malheureux._ Focus. Remember.


End file.
